The Caged Bird
by Lorrean
Summary: Why does the caged bird sing?


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Teen Titans.**

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 _The caged bird sings_

 _with a fearful trill_

 _of things unknown_

 _but longed for still_

 _and his tune is heard_

 _on the distant hill_

 _for the caged bird_

 _sings of freedom…_

 **I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou**

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Starfire woke.

She didn't open her eyes immediately, praying that since she had last seen her surroundings something had changed for the better. That, perhaps, the Titans had come to rescue her, like they had in her dreams. Or that her entire experience was a dream, and she was waking to her room, where she could shake the nightmare off. She prayed her heavy lids open, and a stone wall was all that she saw.

She bit back a bitter sigh.

Nothing had changed. She had not had a nightmare.

She was living in one.

Starfire shifted, wincing at the pain in her right leg. And the pain in her right arm. Both were maimed with large open cuts that sent a flame of pain throughout her body when she dared to move them. They were not the only injuries, simply the ones that hurt the most. Starfire's arms and legs covered with dried blood, cuts, bruises, and welts from various instruments of torture. The soles of her feet and the palms of her hands were red with burns, her clothing tattered and torn.

In short, she was beat up. Battered, burned, weathered, and bruised.

She was weak. Powerless. Completely drained. Someone had exhausted all her natural energy from her body at some point (probably her sister's blasted machine ray), along with every armour she had, even the arm bands she wore. Her tormentors were thorough, leaving her with nothing. In her weakened state and without anything at all on her body, she never felt this bare and vulnerable since that incident with those sadistic Psions, all the painful experiments she and her sister have been put through, all the violent screaming and endless agony...

Exactly as she knew her captors wanted her to feel.

Starfire shifted a bit more, now having a purpose. She scuttled along the floor to the door of her cell and glanced through the bars. Guards stood on either side of her door, clad in black, the Tamaran emblem on both shoulders. One guard looked down at her, and Starfire stared calmly back. Neither said a word. Starfire knew no mercy or information would slip through the guards' lips. Blackfire did not have merciful men in her army. It was merely routine to check the guards on each waking. A few seconds more of staring and the guard's hand slipped to his sword hilt in warning. Starfire nodded in acknowledgement of the not so subtle hint, and scooted back to her original position.

It wasn't a large cell. It was more of a small walk in closet. It was about five feet long and four feet wide, Starfire mentally noted, with a ceiling perhaps eight feet high. The stone walls were like cinder blocks. The floor was uneven cobblestone that made sitting a pain, literally.

There were no windows, no lights or flames. The only reason Starfire could see at all was the light from the torches that lit the hallway outside her cell. The fire cast just enough light to see the first half of her cell. The other half was cloaked in shadows, and Starfire could just barely see the other wall.

The cell smelled. She was never let out, ever, not even for torturing for information. The smell was a mixture of her blood, sweat, and the far corner of her cell that served as a bathroom.

Starfire gently laid her head back against the cool wall for a second of rest, and then leaned forward again. She shuffled across to the other side of the cell, careful to stay on the side of the light. She raised her hands, and felt a row of scratches in the stone. Tally marks. She counted them, even though she already knew how many there were.

Twenty.

She had woken up in that cell twenty times. She ran her hand along the floor of the cell, and found the tiny piece of stone she had discovered on her first "day". She raised it up, and used in to scratch another mark into the wall.

Twenty-one.

Starfire swallowed a sob that threatened to break out, and moved back to her rest area. She had mentally divided the entire cell into areas. Lookout. Resting. Counting. Bathroom. The space on the right was where she hid rations. Every time she received food or water, she would consume half, and then save the rest to ration out until her next feeding. Better to be safe than sorry, and she had already been thankful to X'hal that she did so.

Starfire reached a hand out, and grabbed a water bottle. She held it up into the light, and saw she had about a quarter of the bottle left. She took a slow sip, and was tempted to drink more, but logically placed the cap back on, tucking the bottle back into the shadows. She toyed with eating one of her slices of bread, but she only had a couple left, and she had eaten one yesterday. No. Better to wait, at least until later that day. Maybe she would get more food soon.

Blackfire couldn't let her sister die, not when the information she had remained locked inside.

Starfire cleared her throat, testing her voice. She still had it, despite the lack of water. A melody occurred to her, and she began to hum. She loved music. As a child back in Tamaran her mother would sing to her lullabies to keep her at peace while she sleeps. Even at the Titans Tower, she would often spend hours murmuring the same song before she goes to bed.

The guard who had looked at her earlier did so again at the sound of her humming, cocking her head. Starfire ignored him, and continued to hum, staring ahead, not really seeing.

"Has the princess lost it?" The first guard asked his companion.

The other guard shrugged.

Starfire closed her eyes and pretended she wasn't there. She wasn't locked in a cell, she was at home. She wasn't surrounded by enemies; she was surrounded by her friends being their playful spirits. She wasn't caged, she was free. She came to the lyrics of the song in her native language, and began to sing.

It felt good to sing. It felt so good to use her voice for something other than screaming. Instead of pained yells and groans bouncing of the walls, notes and melodies surrounded her.

"What is she doing?" The first guard sound disgusted.

"Singing."

"I know that, idiot! But why?"

Starfire ignored the sound of the guards' voice. She concentrated on the words and the notes they followed, throwing herself into her voice. She let the song speak for her, the fear and pain inside her echoed into the song. She sang her weariness, her pain, her sorrow. She sang of memories and feelings, of fear and dread, of desire for freedom. She sang her love for her friends, for her people, her determination to keep them safe.

While she never uttered a single word about it, she sang her soul. Locked behind the steel bars, Starfire sang for an escape from them.

When she finished the song, Starfire felt lighter. Singing had given her a taste of freedom. While she sang, she wasn't locked in a cell. While she sang, she was in control of herself, of what came next.

Soon though, the silence began pressing back down on her. She was back in the cage, trapped once more. The silence itself was a chain, holding him down.

Starfire thought of her Titan friends. X'hal, she missed them. She missed them so much. She pictured their faces in her mind. Raven's small smile, Beast Boy and Cyborg's goofy grins, Robin's smirk. She longed to return to them, to leave this place, to lose the bonds of a prisoner and be free again.

So Starfire cleared her throat and began to sing once more.

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 **A/N:** **And if you read, do the author a favor and leave a review.**


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